The city was quiet in a way that cities were not meant to be quiet.
Nissa Tarvond walked the outer ring of Ashenveil alone, her silver gauntlets at her sides, her helm carried rather than worn. The streets were clean. The paving stones were swept. Every building face within the Spire's influence zone had been resurfaced with the pale, heat-resistant render that the reconstruction teams had applied during the capital's redesign.
Everything was in order.
She had been walking for two hours and had not heard a dog bark. She had not heard children running, or the complaint of a market cart wheel, or the specific low-grade percussion of a thousand ordinary lives coexisting in proximity. The sounds that a city made when it was inhabited by people who were living rather than functioning.
What she heard was prayer.
